About Dr. Paul E. Mennick

Private Class - 2 days

After some extraordinary experiences in Australia, New Zealand, and several other countries over the past 30 years, Dr. Mennick continues to offer breeding services seven days per week at his facility in northern California. He has now worked for three of the four largest Standardbred breeding operations in the southern Hemisphere, and for Widden Stud, the oldest and largest Thoroughbred farm on earth run by the same family for seven generations. All of these farms normally breed over one thousand mares each season. Additional consultation work and training courses have been provided in the Phillippines, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Fiji, Mexico, Canada, and Puerto Rico, with private or semi-private training courses provided to colleagues and breeders from many countries in Europe, the Middle East, and South America.

Dr. Mennick began working with horses while in high school, at an Arabian breeding farm in Nicasio, California. During veterinary school, he wrote a number of articles for Arabian Horse World. Upon graduation, his first position was as the resident veterinarian for Nevele R Stud in New Zealand, at that time one of the ten largest breeding farms on earth. For three years he "swapped seasons", coming back to California for six month stints in the Bay Area and the Santa Ynez valley, before settling down for a bit and opening his own practice in Galt in 1988. While overseas, he spent time visiting some of the pioneers in ruminant reproduction, and for nearly a decade was the only veterinarian offering the laparoscopic AI technique in sheep in the western United States. In the 1990s he leased the breeding facility next to the Rancho Murieta showgrounds outside Sacramento for six years, where his export work and further expansion into canine and bovine reproduction began. It was there that he performed his first bovine frozen embryo transfer, and started his own herd of Senepol cattle. When that lease was up in 1999, he made his move to the more rural pastures of the northern Sacramento Valley. In the fall of 2004, Pacific International Genetics stood "ALBERT ALBERT", one of the top Standardbred stallions of all time, under export quarantine to a book of 171 mares in Australia and New Zealand. Three days each week, a small box of a dozen or so semen doses was sealed and driven to the USDA in Sacramento for hand-signing of each page of the 28 page Health Certificate, then carried to the airport for delivery to Los Angeles, where a broker hand carried the dreams of breeders to the International side, for the overnight nonstop to Melbourne or Auckland. Another broker met the box at Customs, and upon agricultural clearance redistributed those doses throughout the country.

In addition to fertility work at his facility, he is now also consulting for Crossroads Veterinary Hospital in Anderson (equine) and the new Valley Oak Veterinary Center in Chico (canine). ​Services include semen freezing and shipping in all common species, transcervical and surgical AI in dogs, and embryo transfer in sheep, goats, horses and cattle. At times Dr. Mennick still sneaks overseas for a few months of breeding work during the "off season", but maintains daily contact via email with all clients, and effects frozen semen shipping as needed through a local colleague. Email is thus a preferred means of communication; you are welcome to phone, but be prepared to leave a message. Even if overseas, the phone system turns your voice message into an email which Dr. Mennick then receives wherever he is, so while response time is normally within a day, please do not forget to leave your email address at the end of your message.

Any colleague considering a veterinary position overseas is welcome to contact me for a lot of helpful advice, tips, and suggestions with everything from airfares, luggage and Customs tips, obtaining visas and veterinary licenses, to employment contracts and pitfalls, recommended (and not so recommended) positions, job search resources, differences in medication, racetrack rules, costs of living, and all the subtle nuances of living and practicing in another country. Spanning 30 years, Dr. Mennick has 10 seasons of experience overseas; some on short-stay, business visas, some on long-term, employment-sponsored visas, some as resident veterinarians for large breeding farms, some as associates in a practice. All discussions are in strict professional confidence. Contact me at pacintgen@gmail.com